Introducing Smarter Notifications in Coder

With the release of Coder v2.27, we’re giving both administrators and developers more powerful ways to stay informed. Until now, Coder’s notification system relied primarily on predefined, system-generated events. While useful, it left limited room for customization or user control.

That changes today. Two major enhancements arrive in v2.27:

• Custom Notifications — a flexible new mechanism allowing notifications to be triggered directly from inside Coder-managed workspaces.
• Coder Task Notifications — automatic alerts when long-running tasks complete or require additional input.

Together, these features make it easier than ever to focus on what matters, confident you’ll be notified when action is needed.

A new era of notifications in Coder

Before v2.27, Coder notifications were tightly bound to built-in system events. Administrators who wanted to enhance Coder templates with additional alerts triggered by specific environment events had no direct way to do so through Coder itself. Developers using workspaces faced similar challenges: if they wanted to customize their environment with additional notifications, there was no native way to notify anyone through the platform.

The same problem applied to Coder Tasks. These tasks can take a long time to finish and some require user input mid-run. Without notifications, users had two bad options: either keep checking manually or risk finding out too late that a task was blocked or had already finished hours ago.

The goal of these new features is simple: stop forcing users to babysit their work. Let them focus on more important activities and notify them only when their attention is required.

What’s new in v2.27

These two features give Coder users and admins more control, flexibility, and confidence. Developers can finally walk away from long-running jobs or complex tasks without fear of missing something important.

In short, notifications now work the way you need them to: customized, actionable, and integrated directly into your workflows.

1. Custom Notifications

Custom Notifications open up the Coder notification system for both administrators and developers.

• Template administrators can script notifications to fire automatically when specific events occur inside a workspace. For example, if a critical metric crosses a threshold, the workspace can immediately notify the right people without any manual intervention.
• Developers can trigger their own notifications with a simple CLI command, such as when a long-running job finishes or when a certain condition is met inside the workspace.

The syntax is straightforward:

coder notifications custom "Custom Title" "Custom Message”

Notifications can be delivered via email, webhooks, and directly into the Coder Inbox, depending on how your environment is configured.

2. Notifications for Coder Tasks

The second major addition in v2.27 focuses on Coder Tasks. Users now receive notifications whenever a task changes its state, for example, when it finishes running or becomes idle waiting for additional input.

This means users can launch multiple tasks at once, switch to other work, and rely on notifications to call them back only when action is needed. No more checking every few minutes or discovering hours later that a task has been stuck waiting on them.

Getting started with Custom Notifications and Coder Task Notifications

Both features build on Coder’s existing notification system, so there’s very little setup required.

• For Custom Notifications, administrators can integrate scripts directly into workspaces, while developers can issue notifications manually or automatically using the CLI.
• For Coder Task Notifications, users simply need to ensure notifications are enabled in their account settings. By default, these alerts will be sent for any task-enabled workspace with no extra configuration required.

Upgrade to Coder v2.27 and start using:

• Custom Notifications to script your own alerts for any event in a workspace.
• Coder Task Notifications to stay informed when long-running or interactive tasks need your attention.

Check out the Coder CLI documentation and online help on Notifications to get started today.